[Comment] What are EU battlegroups for if not to intervene in Congo?
PETER SAIN LEY BERRY
21.11.2008 @ 08:16 CET
EUOBSERVER / COMMENT - Whether apocryphal or not, it is said that Frederick the Great of Prussia (1712-86) - "old Fritz" as he came to be known - would urge on his columns of young soldiers with the exasperated cry "Wollen Sie ehrmals leben?" (Do you want to live for ever?).
Were Frederick alive today he might want to say something similar to the European Army, or rather those wanting it to remain pristine and unused and not sent to the dangerous tumult in Africa's dark centre.
Europe should intervene in the DRC quickly and decisively (Photo: wikipedia)
The army is not, of course, either properly European, or even an army come to that. It remains a collection of soldiers from a few member states available for constituting "battlegroups," which can then be dispatched swiftly to pursue tasks of peacemaking in the wider European interest.
For some two years now, and in the teeth of opposition both inside and outside the union, the EU has proudly declared that it has these forces available to intervene where other such forces - for instance the UN or NATO - are unwilling or unable to act with the alacrity required. Small contingents have intervened here and there. But never has decisive force been deployed.
In terms of capability to mount overseas operations, Britain and France stand head and shoulders above the rest of the union. The European Defence Force initiative came therefore primarily from Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac in one of their rare moments of accord. Now the potential exists for it to become one of the more significant European achievements of the time.
The dark heart of Africa
In recent days the renewed tragedy of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has slowly filtered through to the headlines. This is the former colony, the Belgian Congo, the size of Western Europe, on whose ivory and rubber much of Brussels is built. It is the country that Joseph Conrad called - and for good reason - "the dark heart of Africa." A country where some 5 million have died as a result of war these past 10 years.
Were the DRC to be moved to the Balkans or the Middle East - to anywhere, in fact, but Africa - our newspapers would not be big enough for the deaths, atrocities, hate, random violence, rape of the land, burnings, summary executions and lines of corpses.
We should be screaming about the decimation of the mountain gorillas in the Virunga National Park, through which the militias roam, shooting everything that moves, including the wardens. The park is being burnt and its wildlife habitats destroyed to provide cooking charcoal for the swollen population of Goma, the regional capital on the shores of Lake Kivu, now bursting with a million souls.
A train of human misery - a quarter of a million strong - has fled south towards the city in recent weeks away from the fighting instigated by the rebel Tutsi General Laurent Nkunda and from the even more insidious and frightening attacks of the so-called Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).
The LRA have taken advantage of the turbulence to embark again on their murderous campaign of burning villages, shooting (or worse) the adult inhabitants and kidnapping the children who, drugged to the eyeballs, they force to become child soldiers and prostitutes.
No surprise then that the UN reports that from an area of 10,000 square kilometres in the north-east of the DRC scarcely a single person remains.
The largest peacekeeping operation in the world
They flee this rich and beautiful land, built of a raft of valuable minerals that includes a third of the world's tin reserves. Hardly anywhere on earth has suffered more from what Robert Burns termed "man's inhumanity to man."
There is a savagery, a contempt for feeling, a primitive brutality which, like some curable but virulent disease, has no right to exist in these otherwise enlightened times.
Violence towards women is particularly severe, with rape used regularly as a weapon of war. The accounts written by sober doctors in the hospitals of Goma are distressingly revolting. It is not surprising that the people run for safety leaving everything behind at the first sound of gunfire - which is how militias of no more than a few thousand can terrorise a whole land.
Indeed, villagers are not safe from the troops of their own government who also rape and steal with impunity. Even the precious hospitals in Goma have been looted of medicine and equipment.
The UN of course is already in the DRC. Its 17,000 strong force, MONUC, is the largest peacekeeping operation in the world - 6,000 of its troops are in Goma. But self-evidently the force has failed to protect the civilian population.
That is not entirely its fault, as one of its generals, Bipin Rawat, has pointed out. It is something of a handicap to have your tanks painted a livid white. Terms of engagement also require similar advertisement of one's presence with the requirement to give warnings.
Three thousand more UN troops have been agreed, but these are not expected to arrive quickly. Meanwhile, Europe has promised only an airlift and humanitarian supplies.
How should the EU react?
This is not enough. Although General Nkunda has just withdrawn his forces by 25 miles, as agreed with the UN's envoy, the former Nigerian President Obasanjo - he can advance again at will. Many believe it is only a matter of time before he takes Goma and that the the UN cannot stop him.
So a desperate request has gone out from 44 civil organisations in the city - the nearest thing Goma has to regional government - for the EU to send a force now to guarantee their security. How should the EU react?
Left to herself there is little question that France would send troops - and Belgium too, the former colonial power. No doubt Germany could also be persuaded.
Britain, however, is set strongly against any intervention. Its overstretched defence priorities lie elsewhere - in Iraq and Afghanistan. It fears another long commitment, another drain on the public purse at a time the government wishes only to boost the domestic economy. It argues that MONUC should simply send a greater part of its force to Goma and it is blocking any move to send a European force.
Too bad. Europe has a duty - especially following the election of Barack Obama - to secure a different, more co-operative world. Europe should intervene in the DRC quickly and decisively.
The battlegroups of the European Army are not there for show.
Peter Sain ley Berry is an independent commentator on European affairs